Mahali has lived here for 23 years.

He was born here.

It's sort of an end of an era but Mahali leaving was an active choice.

The amount of water we were using to provide hippos this space was massive.

Its about 20 million gallons per year.

He is going to be moving to a facility in Texas.

He's going to be out on a much larger space, he's going to have a girlfriend, which is wonderful and have some social interaction.

Hes pretty goofy.

He's playful.

He definitely gets nervous about some things.

A goose landed in his yard one time and terrified him, and so he ran into the pool to get away from the goose.

There are some animals maybe anesthetizing them fully, and then waking them up in a crate is the best option for them.

For these guys, thats a massive undertaking.

He's 4,000 pounds, so the equipment needed to actually move him if we were to anesthetize him, would be difficult to get into his exhibit space.

We were able to put this very large crate into his space, and it starts with just giving him the choice to expose himself to smelling the crate, poking his head inside, doing some investigating without us being involved.

So it's all on his own terms.

Over time, you know, he got desensitized to the crate being in there and then we started working with him actively to come inside the crate.

The target pole helps really focus attention to specifically where we're wanting an animal to be located and it sort of builds up that momentum, that confidence, and just provides one more way for us to clearly communicate with an animal when obviously we don't speak the same language.

Having to say goodbye to a really fun friend is sad.

But I think ultimately our team is very supportive of the discussions we've had about where do we go next.

And we're all very excited for Mahali and his next step but we also know that where he's going he's just going to have an opportunity to thrive you can't help but be very excited for him.